Your Namo conversion is not cheap, but the factory e Brompton is very expensive.
It's a simple £100 hub motor and battery, no more than £500, probably less.
Charging about £1,300 more than standard bike for those bits is good business if you can get it.
Maybe if they charged a premium of £2,000 the poxy thing would work reliably,
I think the calculation is a bit too simplistic - while it is not completely wrong personally I'd look at it with a little grain of salt...
- the Brompton electric is priced at 2595 Pounds (M2L variant)
- a standard M2L is at 975 Pounds according to the Brompton bike builder, including the carrier block. To make it comparable you would however have to add a small bag and battery lights, thus ending up at 1175 Pounds including the Brompton battery lights and a mini-O-bag, leaving out that the electric is bascially built as a black edition which would add to the price. So your ~1300 Pounds extra for the electric seems about correct.
Now let's look at the Nano:
According to their
price-list the base price is 750 Pounds with a 4Ah battery and 899 Pounds with a 13Ah battery. The Brompton electric comes with a 8,55 battery, so calculationwise to make it comparable we could use something like 825 Pounds. You will need a bag fitting kit at 35 Pounds, lightening at 100 Pounds, fitting at 100 Pounds and shipping at 50 Pounds. A total of 1110 Pounds plus the basic bike - 1095 Pounds for a M2L with mini-O-bag but w/o battery lights. A final total of about 2200 Pounds.
So the price difference is in the ballpark of 400 Pounds. The differences are:
- The Brompton electric comes as black edition wether you like it or not, worth about 100-150 Pounds. It has a strengthened frame which possibly it an advantage (though I am not aware of steel Brompton frames or forks breaking on Nano bikes). It has a torque sensor in the bottom bracket which i consider to be a
huge advantage and a major difference between the two - not available on the nano (of the aftermarket kits only
ebikes.ca offers one as an option), as a spare part from Brompton it is listed at about 120 Pounds. Plus the thing comes directly from the factory, adding an emotional premium on top. Brompton has spent considerably time and money (which they have to get back) to develop a custom motor, battery and integration which hopefully leads to a very well integrated system (but also to downsides like limited choice of bags, a proprietary battery and an incompatible carrier block). However: The problem the OP is having would possibly not have raised with a Brompton electric as it would either work or it would go back to the dealer and the buyer would not scratch his head about what the root cause may be and if it may have been his fault.
- The Nano on the other hand can be retrofitted to an existing bike (which is a huge advantage), it uses any existing bag (and can use any Brompton bag in opposite to the Brompton electric), you have total freedom of battery choice regarding size and make. In general it is a pretty open system in opposite to the closed one by Brompton. The thing has been in the field for about ten years, so there's a proven track record that is works reliably. Still the parts are genuine asian parts (leading to some compromise here and there, though probably tolerable) and the build, while working well, has the aftermarket factor, being not as perfectly integrated and partly - looking at i.e. the Bosch-Adaptor - offering a
very handcrafted atmosphere (at least for my German mind
), while as an idea being again a clever solution.
Which basically means: of the 400 Pounds difference in price arguably 250-280 Pounds are already spent/justified by the additional features on the electric through torque sensor and black edition. Which lowers the "real" difference to as little as about 120 - 150 Pounds. The Nano and the Brompton electric are simply different products, more different than noticed on first look.
There are also a lot of other retrofit solutions in the market that compete with the Nano, all with different advantages and disadvantages like i.e. the
Swytch which with it's currently discounted offering at 699 Pounds with a 10Ah battery at the lower end of the price range (but from my experience with it the price also comes at a price). So in general of the retrofit-solutions the Nano is one of the best ones I'd say. When starting from scratch, not owning a Brompton, the price difference to a Brompton electric is there but maybe it is not as huge as one would imagine. if you already own a Brompton it is a completely different story. But in the end I'd make my decision dependent from my needs and if possible an extended test ride with various solutions. The Brompton electric is expensive, but on the other hand most ebikes from a well known brand are, the more the folders. If you look i.e. at
Tern's Vectron Q9 with the Bosch drive the list price for this is 2999.-€ while it's cheaper sibling
Vectron D7i goes for 600€ less with a Chinese made Bafang drive - still a lot of money in comparison to what a non electric Tern Link is priced at...
Not in the defense of Brompton but I thous would not wholeheartedly agree with your statement about the electric:
"It's a simple £100 hub motor and battery, no more than £500, probably less." It may be true (but I am not at all sure about that) if you just take the materials into account but clearly not if you consider the r&d and the extra variability needed in the factory let alone the positioning in the market, astonishingly despite all delays being a early player in the electric folding range and therefore having a huge competitive advantage (and in opposite to the Nano being available worldwide w/o issues). I am still wondering why people are making these kind of moaning statements as soon as it comes to bicycles but at the same time order expensive aluminium wheels for their cars (that add no value apart from optics), buying new smartphones every two years or clothes from brands like Adidas,
Nike, let alone the more luxurious branded ones...
